Touching Paper
I briefly flirted with the idea of building an eLibrary using Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) rather than continuing to buy the print version of books. After a brief trial run, I concluded that eLibraries are not for me.
As an experiment, I downloaded ADE and bought a book. The first observation I made was I had to increase the font size in ADE to maximum just to make the book readable. The next observation that jumped out at me was there is no turning pages. One of the pleasures of reading a book is physically turning the page as you progress through the author’s work. There is something uniquely satisfying about that.
There is no substitute for holding a book in your hands and turning the pages one at a time, underlining, tagging, and just plain being present with words that you can see and touch. The book is always there for you. You don’t have to carry a device with you. A device, especially one like a MacBook, is a pain to haul around. Yes, there are eReaders out there that are designed for that purpose but I’m adverse to owning another electronic device, in particular a single purpose one. I feel like one device should be enough. (Not counting the ubiquitous cell phone.) I realize this makes me sound like a Luddite. I’m not. This website is built using a MacBook Pro and sophisticated editing software.
At last month’s book club meeting I sat next to a fellow that had a large format eReader on his lap. A dozen books were displayed on the library shelf in addition to the one we were discussing. He never opened the book we were discussing, he just sat with the eReader on his lap, very proud of the titles staring me in the face, or so it seemed to me. I had the print version on my lap, tagged, ready for discussion. When the chance arose, I opened my print book to one of the tags that marked a favorite passage and shared the words with the group. I guess I’m old school.
As a final deterrent to building an electronic library, the digital editions cost almost as much as their print cousins. Unless you are going to stick to what your library offers electronically, which of course does not include everything in the print world, there is little difference in cost between an electronic library and a print library.
I’m going to continue touching paper.
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